Frequently, users of computer equipment and other equipment involving complex technology need to keep bulky records including service manuals, circuit diagrams, and service histories for ready access by service technicians who would face undue difficulties if such records could not be readily retrieved. Also, users managing their inventories of such equipment need to mark such equipment with bar codes representing inventory numbers, with warranty information, and with other data. These needs are pronounced with governmental agencies, large businesses, and other users having substantial inventories of such equipment.
Microfilm and microfiche have been used to reduce service manuals and other data to compact forms. However, microfilm and microfiche share a serious disadvantage, which is that neither can be easily read by a human under normal room light without special projectors or other apparatus. Where microfiche has rigid cell sizes, it may be necessary to cut up drawings and other pages of nonstandard sizes before recording them on microfiche. Heretofore, there has been no effective way to reproduce plural pages of human-readable data in a compact form that can be easily read by a human under normal room light with a simple magnifier, such as a pocket magnifier.